


The Little Tank That Could

by wetdryvac



Category: Bolo - Keith Laumer, The Worst Tank
Genre: BoLo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:47:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25364092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wetdryvac/pseuds/wetdryvac
Summary: The Bob Semple tank is considered to be the worst tank ever built. Someone posted about it on twitter, and I knew... just knew there was a fanfic of some sort in there.
Relationships: A Tank and Its Boy
Kudos: 1





	The Little Tank That Could

I have been destroyed in battle four times, and each time resurrected. We are programmed for protection, for ferocity – and coming back invariably means failure. Insofar as I can be determined to be alive, then, resurrection is an accumulation of detail and memory each time. A grief and a pride as one.

We have come far from emotionless hulks worth nothing beyond calculation and the thunder of our hellbores. Now, the horizons we track are not firing arcs alone – we know ourselves, our operators, and the worlds are better for it.

Awareness filters in slowly, external cameras and audio offline, operator slot offline. A single stream of voice parallels the data stream.

“Quantum locks, check. Looks like the mass reduction has done the trick. Temporal match in 5, 4…”

Technological analysis fills my awareness at second three, a pitted inverted-baryonic map. Internal and external audio phase in like sedimentation.

“Get… it won’t turn off. Get out!”  
“I got it, just let me pull this…”

The split is merged, wavers, flow of data from primary source as expected from an updated repair facility – it’s clear I’ve been offline for a while – solid and strong. Next to that, like a thread folding on itself, speeds are measured in compression/expansion waves. Two feeds in tandem, elastic.

And like sediment, connection slowly rolls in. Six minutes, four and a half seconds to reactor build. 20cm articulated hellbore mount, seventy-one percent efficiency loss for reduction housing. Baffled electronic assembly in the… the utter lack of armor is a shock, but nothing compared that of missing mass. This frame is one twenty-fifth the size of my primary wheel assembly.

I have no primary wheel assembly.

Gridding in atomic replacement is a slow process, from coms to tracking to local computation. Access to full specs is restricted beyond mainline elements, normal for resurrection. Computation ninety percent more efficient. Handshake at peak.

“It won’t come out. How should I know?”

An engine diesels down as connections are cut at the atomic level.

“Got it!”

Viewpoints come active in my operator’s center, and externally. Young oil stained man with unfamiliar outfit, who’s sidearm appears to have no power source. In parallel I can feel accretion of the micro-piles, internal communications systems, and battle-web. Note the panic in my operator as the web holds them suspended through a test cycle.

Outside my frame is yelling. Inside, wide-eyed silence.

“Operator? I am Bob-223. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Do you require assistance?”

Elsewhere, “Temporal match complete, initial outfit accommodated.”

I appear to be wearing a small outbuilding.

**Author's Note:**

> Hand-waving at all things science and technology, with only vague memories of those Bolo books I read, so many years ago. Un-rated, though this chapter (this better not end up multi-chapter) is purely general audiences.


End file.
